Friday, 28 March 2014

A tale of two soap boxes at Brent Connects

Guest blog by Philp Grant

I was not able to be at the Wembley “Brent Connects” meeting
on 26 March, but hope that the following “soapbox update” item which I sent in
was read out:-

A “Wembley Lion”

At the Wembley “Brent Connects”
forum in October 2013, I asked for the support of local people, councillors and
Council Officers to get a lion head from the former Palace of Industry building
put on permanent public display for the 90th anniversary of the British
Empire Exhibition. The meeting responded well to my “soapbox”, and I am pleased
to let you know that Wembley will soon have its “Lion” again.

Volunteers from Wembley History
Society and the Exhibition Study Group have worked together with Brent’s Regeneration,
Heritage and Parks sections since last October. As a result of this, one of the
lion head corbels will be placed on a concrete plinth at the new open space in
Wembley Hill Road, opposite York House, by the end of next month.

The plinth will have a plaque
donated by Quintain, the Wembley Park developers who gave Brent three lion
heads from the demolished building. It will also have a panel giving details
about the history of the British Empire Exhibition in 1924/25. This Exhibition,
which helped to put Wembley “on the map”, brought people together from across
the world, to get to know each other better.

I hope that today’s Wembley
community, whatever their origins, will enjoy visiting this piece of our shared
local history. From the end of April, please go and see it – take your
families, take a picnic, and have your photograph taken with a “Wembley Lion”!

If you go between late April and 31 July, why not combine this with a visit to
Brent’s BEE 90th anniversary exhibition at the Civic Centre.

I also hope that everyone at this
evening’s meeting will note from this example that good things can happen when
the Council works together in co-operation with interested local people. Thank
you.

I was good to be able to report back on this example of “Brent
Connects” helping to provide a positive result. It is part of the consultation
system set out in Brent Council’s Constitution, to encourage local people to
get involved in the way decisions are made. This time it worked, but things are
not looking so good over another “soapbox” I gave at the Kingsbury and Kenton
“Brent Connects” in February 2014
(http://www.wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/respecting-brent-councils-constitution.html). When I received my invitation to
the next meeting of this forum I had to reply as follows:

Thank you for your email, link to the minutes of the meeting on 4
February and copy of the agenda for the meeting on 9 April, which I certainly
plan to attend.

Please note that there are some errors in the soapbox feedback section
of the February notes on my item headed "Respecting Brent's
Constitution":

Under "You Said" the text misses the main point of what
I did say (see copy attached). I would suggest that this paragraph
should be amended to:

‘Mr Grant quoted
extracts on consultation from the council’s Constitution, and felt that the
council was in breach of them. He gave one example of how staff at Museum and
Archives had been restructured while consultation was in progress on a
new Museum and Archives Strategy, which should have been completed
before any restructuring. This was one of a number of examples of
Brent's Officers ignoring what were supposed to be council commitments about
consulting with the community. He said that he was writing jointly to the
Council Leader and other party group leaders, asking them to work together to
find a solution to this problem, so that everyone at Brent Council respected its
commitments and worked together with local people for the benefit of the
community.’

Under "We Said" it states: 'The Leader’s Office has
responded to Mr Grant.'

It may be that the Leader's Office intends to respond to me
before 9 April, but at the moment this should read: 'The Leader’s Office has
not responded to Mr Grant.' I am copying this email to Councillor
Butt, so that he can ensure that a response is sent in good time before the
meeting.

In fact, the only written response I have received
from any of the three party group leaders on the Council to the joint letter
that I gave or sent to each of them was a copy of an email from Cllr. Paul
Lorber to Fiona Ledden, Brent’s chief legal officer, on 12 February. He asked
her to bring the matters I had raised about Brent Officers not respecting its
Constitution to a meeting of the Council’s Constitutional Working Group, and to
invite me to that meeting to explain my concerns in full.

Cllr. Lorber’s email was copied to Cllrs. Butt and
Kansagra, but in the spirit of the group leaders working together which I had
requested, it would have been better if he had asked them to support a joint
approach to Brent’s Director of Legal and Procurement on this. As it was, she
swiftly replied to the group leaders, with copy to me, that: ‘the Constitutional
Working Group is not the venue for discussions with members of the public, or
consideration of staff related issues, [and] I therefore feel unable to comply
with the request.’

So there
we have it, Brent has a Constitutional Working Group, but it is not allowed, by
a Senior Council Officer, to consider alleged breaches of Brent’s Constitution
by Senior Council Officers. It is certainly not allowed to hear what ordinary
members of Brent’s public have to say about the Constitution, a document which
includes the following commitment, quoted in my “soapbox” of 4 February:

‘The Council is committed to
involving the community through effective consultation and two-way
communication.’ (Article 10.1)

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